Home Improvements in the Yard

My daughter is down for her nap and the kitchen is clean. I can't continue working on my ciabatta rolls for another 30 minutes. It's too early to start dinner. It's Sunday so I can't (shouldn't) work on my novel, hang drywall or go outside and shovel stuff. I've written my ROW-80 post for the week. I'm caught up on The Bachelorette. I'm not interested in the novel I started reading yesterday. There's no laundry to fold. I'm not in the midst of any sewing projects. Darling's toys are put away....

So I guess I will just have to write a blog post. :o)

I'm not sure what has gotten into me lately. I've been driving full-steam ahead on various house projects. I think it's just because I am fed up with being halfway through so many different things, and having so many goals and dreams that just aren't going anywhere. I've said, "Screw it. I am going to get some things done!" It probably helps a lot that Nate is off work for the summer and the weather is finally good.

Outside in the backyard, we (Nate) got the tree stump from that old, massive pine tree out of the ground. That was a huge task all by itself. Then came the trouble of how to chop it up and haul it away. The thing probably weighed 300 pounds! The short version of the story is that it's gone now. (Of course, before we were finally rid of it, the !^@%ing stump broke the back window in our truck. The window is fixed now. In retrospect, it would have cost less to hire a tree removal company to take out the stump than it cost us to put in the new window. Ugh!!!)

The stump went away a couple of weeks ago. Since then, we've been working on clearing and leveling the ground that use to be at the base of the tree. Part of it is going to be planted with new grass in the fall. Another part of it will be a play area for our daughter.... I just need to find her a playet or a yard. (I really want this one from Costco... but something like this would be great too.)

Here's a series of picture of the backyard, from when we moved in until today (sorry, these are not the best photos; I didn't do a good job getting the "before" shots):

It's a huge difference. There's still quite a bit that we need to do, but I am very happy with the progress we've made, especially this last year

In the front yard there have been a few improvements so far this year, with several more planned this summer. We re-did the planters that lead to our front door. I have a "before" picture from when we first moved into the house, but unfortunately I don't have any "between" pictures. Then again, the current look of the planter is still not final -- it's just a nice-looking improvement until we can afford to make a rather drastic set of changes. Oh well. Here's the original planter, and the current version (noting that we did not make all of these changes this year, but have been working on it for the last four years):

On the north side of the front yard, projects include rebuilding the planter with new stonework, pouring a "BBQ" patio just off the kitchen, and pouring/building a new shed for our garbage cans.

...

And with that, I'm out of time. I need to go work on cranberry ciabatta rolls and start thinking about dinner. I guess I will need to find time for an inside-the-house post later this week!

(P.S. I'm also posting updates to my writing blog: brookerow80.blogspot.com)

Highlights of the last six weeks

Oh my, has it really been six weeks since I last wrote a blog post? How is that possible? I was thinking that it had been about a month but nope, my last post was April 8th. In my defense, I was sick for most of April, and life has been crazy busy...

But when is life not busy? Seems like all the careful efforts I've made recently to make life less hectic has just meant I have more time for one of the 1,000 other things that are clamoring for my time. (Sound familiar, friends?)

At this very moment, I am sitting in a hotel conference room, very far away from home. I'm here for a week-long work conference. My mom came with me to see the sights and so that I could bring my daughter. (There's no way I could have left Darling at home for the week; I would have been miserable.) They are at the public library this morning, which is just one block down the road. Yesterday they did a bit of sight-seeing. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain so I think they will get trapped inside. Thankfully we have a whole bunch of toys and books with us because we needed a lot of things to keep Darling busy on the long airplane ride, so I think they will have plenty of things to do tomorrow.

Now let's see if I can remember all of the things I've been doing and working on during the last six weeks...

We had family in town, which is definitely the highlight among recent event. Nate's brother, who currently lives in southern California with his family, had some work-related meetings in a city near us. His wife (my SIL Amy) and their daughter Maddie came with him so they could visit us and Amy's family. We got to spend several days together.

It was great to spend time with them, talk, play, and cook. Darling and Maddie had a great time together. They played and read books, and even took a bath together. Darling spent the whole long weekend saying Cousin. We tried to get her to say Cousin Maddie but she didn't seem to get that Maddie is Maddie's name -- I think she thinks that Maddie's name is Cousin. Lol. She still asks for her cousin every couple of days. It's adorable. We loved their visit but did not get enough time with them. Hopefully we'll be able to go to southern California sometime soon and visit them.

That excitement happened during the first weekend in May.

The week before their visit, I took a little day trip to visit friends Kimmy, Nathan, and Little. That's the second-best thing to happen in the past six weeks. I got to see their newly fenced garden and recently built garden boxes. We attempted to make macarons, and had many other delicious things to eat. The babes played with each other. I temporarily lost my keys. I started to panic about the lost keys while I was there, but right now I can't think why I was so worried. I'd love an excuse to move in with my friends and never go home. :o)

Since I'm ordering recent events from most-to-least favorite, I guess the next thing on the list is Mother's Day. Nate was kind enough to make it a bit of a Mother's Weekend for me. I didn't get a complete break from the madness of life, but I did get extra time to rest and read, and I had to change fewer diapers. The Saturday right before mother's day, I actually spent most of the day running some errands while Nate was Super Dad. Some of the errands were fun, others were not. But it was nice to be out of the house and able to do things at my own pace, not at the will and speed of the Toddler.

My mom's day gift this year was an ice cream maker. I specifically requested it, and even went with Nate to get it from Costco. I also picked out the gift wrap that Nate used. (He was "allowed" to pick out the card on his own, ha ha.) Nate was a little bit upset that I picked and helped buy my own gift -- he prefers for gifts to be a total surprise. I'd rather have something I know I'll like. I told him the fun part was the beautiful wrapping he was required to do, and the unknown card.

Unbeknownst to me, Nate had decided to spice up the experience. He spent a couple of weeks writing a series of rhyming riddles, which together made a scavenger hunt. I had to hunt down my present! It was great. The riddles were so well done that I thought he'd found something on the internet that he copied. But no, it was completely original! I loved it, maybe even more than the ice cream maker. So thoughtful.

I think that's it for all of the big events. So in other news, we've been working on the garden. We had some uncharacteristically warm weather in April -- it was hot! The cool-weather plants were unhappy, but then I also couldn't seem to get the warm-weather plants to sprout because it was still cool at night. I finished all of my planting last week before I left on this trip; hopefully when I get home everything will have started growing.

I sold one of our Burleys. I can't remember if I ever blogged about the fact that I have three Burley bike trailers. If I haven't explained this, then don't worry about why I have three. Chalk it up to me being crazy. The good news is that we're down to two because someone came and bought one (the little Bee). I'm working on selling the Cub. I had a couple of people show interest -- one offered me a pathetically low price, the other one wants to come see it. Let's all cross our fingers!

I've also been doing a fair amount of writing. I started a new writing project a few months ago. It's a novel about angels and demons. I feel weird saying that because "supernatural" stories are not in my normal realm of writing, and not even the kind of thing I typically read. But an idea came to me one day, and I've been going for it. Between the outline and the sections I've written, I have more than 12,000 words down. (Generally novels are 50,000+ words.)

One of my goals with this project is to create a complete, detailed outline before I dive heavily into the writing. As of right now, I have a skeleton outline for the whole novel and have written detailed scene outlines for the first half of the story. I want to finish writing the actual story by the end of this year (2013), have it edited at the start of next year, and self-publish it in spring 2014. I think I'm going to re-join a writing challenge called ROW-80 in July, when the next (3Q) round begins. Right now my unofficial goal is to write 1,200 words a week.

My biggest cheerleader for this goal has been author-friend J.R. Pearse Nelson. It's good to know someone who has already jumped through the self-publishing hoops; she's an invaluable resource. She also has another novella coming out soon. I just got to Beta Read the story -- it's the third book in her Children of the Sidhe series, called Flight. It was great. It will be out sometime in July. She plans to publish another novella (book 4 of CotS) and a novel by the end of the year! Amazing. She's such an inspiration.


With that, I think I covered the major news. I hope everyone is doing well!

The last couple of weeks: Gardening and visiting family

Sorry I missed last week's post. We've still been getting back to normal around here after the rounds of illness and Nate's busyness with school. And, honestly... things have been pretty normal, so I don't feel like there's been much to say. Here goes the hum-drum post...

Our garden is growing. The pea plants popped up and look happy. Most of my boxed seeds are fully sprouted (kale, spinach, lettuce, swiss chard, bok choy and carrots). The carrots were the last to come up, but now they have sprouted in abundance. I have a ton of them -- they will need a lot of thinning. My onions did not come up. I mean, like, nothing at all. I think the seed packet was a dud. Last year I got three seed packets of Walla Walla sweet onions, planted two of them, and got nothing. I assumed it was because I planted the seeds too late (aka it was too hot) and they didn't want to come up. Now that I've used the third packet but at the right time (in the cold weather) I feel more confident that I can declare the whole package of seeds to be the cause of the failure, and not something on my end. Whew.

On the downside, this means I have to replant my onion seeds, and just pray that they will be mature before the summer heat comes. (Onions don't like it hot.)

In the greenhouse, cilantro and basil have sprouted. The cabbage starts did nothing. I'm a little disappointed, but since Nate got the garden mostly ready this week, I can now just direct-sow a little row of cabbage. Here's a picture of Nate taking a break from tilling the garden to chat with grandma and Darling:

Tilling was his big project last Monday, on his first day of spring break. He did great -- the garden is pretty much ready to go! Now to figure out how we can keep the weeds down until it's time to actually plant most of the garden (which is not until early June). It would have been nice to wait and till the ground a little closer to the actual planting season, but this was the time Nate had available and so we used it.

Nate also spent some time this week working on building a new "pantry shelf" for the kitchen. We have a little shelf in the corner of our kitchen for foodstuffs...

The design is odd. The original shelf doesn't really fill the space. We happened to have a cheap little homemade bookshelf thing that sorta fit underneath, so we stuck it in the corner. But really, the whole system doesn't make the best use of the space. So we came up with a new design that uses up the whole corner, giving us deeper shelves that are sufficiently tall/short for our needs. (This corner is essentially our pantry space, and it's a bunch of shelves, so we call it the "pantry shelf.") I hoped he would get most of it done this week, but it just didn't work out. We'll keep plugging away in our free time.

Yesterday we went to go see my parents and run some errands. I loaned Nate to my parents for slave labor in the morning (he cut down three trees) while I ran to the church cannery, then in the afternoon after we put the Toddler down for a nap, we went to the temple. My mom made us a pot roast for dinner when we got back. (Yum.) I enjoyed the arrangement; hopefully we can do it again at the end of April and this time go to Ikea in the afternoon. I've been yearning for an Ikea trip. And it's nice to feel like we are helping my parents, who do so much for us!

Today was Easter. Darling wore a lovely white dress with blue flowers. (Yikes, I just realized that I forgot to take a picture and one of my co-workers specifically requested an Easter dress photo -- will have to dress her up and take it tomorrow.) My mom joined us for church, which was really great. She addressed the fun-but-exhausting task of playing with the toddler during the hour of worship service (aka sacrament meeting). My kid was a lot nicer to grandma than she is to me during that hour, even though she was still no picnic today!

After church and Darling's naptime, Nana came to see us. She had an Easter present for our girl: some hand puppets! She made four sets of hand puppets -- four different animals/creatures, with one mommy-sized puppet and one toddler-sized puppet of each. I wish I could take a picture but they are with Darling's toys in her room (and she is asleep). Will have to do that tomorrow, too.

I need to write a post about my goal progress in March, so that will cover some some other recent updates, whenever I get time to write it. I also have several pictures and recipes to share, should I find some time to writing a cooking blog post! I hope everyone had a nice Easter and that all of my local friends were able to enjoy this lovely stretch of spring weather!

No more MIM for him

Nate had his last MIM class yesterday (Saturday). It was the last class of the school term, but more importantly for us, it was his last class for the program. Nate has decided that he is not going to continue pursuing this particular Master's degree. It was a difficult decision for him to reach because he has wanted to get a Master's degree for such a long time, but now that he's gotten a feel for the nature of this program, and with it a better sense of his own strengths/weaknesses and desires, he doesn't feel it's the right program for him.

I'm delighted. While I fully support his desire to get more education, I was also feeling like this program wasn't a good fit for him or for us. It was supposed to be designed for people who work full time -- it was supposed to have a well-paced, manageable course load. Unfortunately it did not live up to the advertisement.

Pile on all the challenges of these last six weeks, and you can see why I would prefer he didn't sign up for another term. Granted, I probably won't get sick THREE TIMES in the next couple of months, so it probably would be a bit more bearable. Still. We like having the man around the house once in awhile, and work and church already take him away from us quite a lot. Maybe this summer, when Nate starts working part time, I will feel differently. For now though.... HOORAY!

While Nate was at class yesterday, I took our daughter to visit his parents. Darling enjoyed reading books, coloring, and chasing after their hoard of chickens. She also got to pick up some of the chicken eggs and look at the baby chicks.

Back on our own farm, we've got some sprouts popping up in the planter's boxes. My bok choy, lettuce, kale, and spinach are all up. The chard, carrots, and onions are still hiding under the dirt. As are the peas that I planted this week. My mom agreed to grow pumpkins for us this year, which will save a LOT of garden space. With all the extra space, I'm thinking I might grow even more corn (it's good chicken food) and maybe more tomatoes (so I can can stuff), and then maybe a bit of newer, experimental plants, like black beans and quinoa

Darling has been helping us out with gardening:

I am nearly recovered from the latest round of illness. Ditto Baby Girl. We both have a bit of a persistent runny nose but are otherwise cured. Err, except for the more sore diapered bottom in the world, poor kid. We've been battling the redness for weeks now, then finally about a week ago her skin just got raw and sore down around her bottom. It has been a horrible week in that regard -- every diaper change means screaming, crying, and getting kicked. I don't blame her (although I do try to dodge the kicks). Hopefully we can see the pediatrician tomorrow, maybe get some stronger medicine. This makes me grateful we haven't had any issues with diaper rash before -- such drama!

2013 Goals: February Recap

I think it will help me make progress with my goals if I occasionally have to give an update. I originally promised to check in at least once each quarter, but more frequent (as often as monthly) updates would be better motivation. So I'll make some notes here and there as I have time, and then publish this post when it's ready!

(...It only took a week to get this written...)


Goal 1: Be Positive
January started out rocky with me falling into negative habits after only a couple of weeks. Then February gave me a bunch of challenges between everyone in the family getting sick illness and Nate being gone a lot for his MIM classes... and I did good! Not great, but better. Nate has been good at reminding me to be positive and vice versa. My mom is also kinda participating in this goal, which is great.

My one confession: I did kinda yell at a driver the other day when I was riding my bike. It wasn't the most uplifting thing to do. But she ran a red light in front of me while talking on her cell phone, and since her window was open I thought it an appropriate opportunity to remind her to HANG UP AND DRIVE. Wouldn't you like to have a bicyclist yell that in your face as you almost run her over? In my defense, she kinda deserved it.

I haven't made any progress on identifying places in the house where I could hang "be positive" reminders. I'll find them this month, since we're done being sick. (Ha, ha. I must have written that sentence before the baby and I came down with colds, again. We're both pretty sick right now.)


Goal 2: Scripture Study (15 mins every day)
I started out strong this year, continuing the full-steam-ahead progress I made in 2012. But then I dropped the ball for most of February because of the aforementioned illnesses and absence. I've been better the past couple of weeks, but still not totally consistent, and not studying for a full 15 minutes. Really, I've just been reading, and only for 5-10 minutes. But at least I'm back on track, if a little behind. I'm making progress on the D&C, still ambitiously hoping to finish it this month. (We'll see.)


Goals 3&4: Blog once a week. Write recipe recaps.
Goal 3 has gone quite well, if you look at the numbers. We're at the 10th week of the year and I have 13 posts done (not counting recipe recaps). I've missed a week or two -- during the "everyone's sick" time in February -- but I'm totally comfortable with the "write weekly" goal, and rockin' it.

Recipe recaps, not so much. I wrote three. I loved them, but they took a long time. And time has been scarce. I think I'll have more luck starting next month (in April) of making this a habit. I'm thinking about changing this goal just a bit. Instead of listing all my recipes each week and making notes, I could try to recap just one recipe each week. In my ideal world I'd still like to write a recap each night and then publish the week's worth at the end of the week, but that's just too ambitious for right now. My apologies to the handful of you who were loving the big, long cooking posts.


Goal 5: Turn my 2012 blog posts into a book (and order a printed copy). 
I haven't even started, haven't really even thought about it. I have the whole year to get this done, and will worry about it later. Maybe... I don't know... next month?... I will get started. I would still prefer to get this done before the summer, but it's not a high priority.


Goal 6: Bike to work every day
There was one week in February when I drove to work a couple of days. It is very hard to bike when I am recovering from a cold because my nose is still runny, so I didn't even try. I think that's completely justified and so I'm going to claim 100% success on this goal so far.


Goal 7: Dessert after dinner, not after 8pm
Ha. I forgot this was a goal. Fail.


Goal 8: Technology off by 9pm, lights out by 9:30pm
Not so good. I started the year out doing good, turning off the tech by 9pm every night, but then when I got sick I reached for the comfort of Netflix and Hulu and cuddled my technology up to bedtime. (Then promptly had trouble getting to sleep, no surprise.) I've been pretty good about bedtime at 9:30, with a couple of misses when I was cleaning the house and one miss when I was watching a really engaging episode of I don't even remember what show. (It wasn't worth it.) There's room to improve.


Goal 9: Blitz journal (daily recap) each day
Success. Kinda. I haven't actually been doing it every single day, but I have one written for each day. In other words, I often do two days at once. It's not my ideal but it works okay. I also find myself sometimes writing notes throughout the day, rather than doing it all at the end of the day. Overall it's going well and I have a complete record, even if it's not been a smooth process.


Goal 10: Grow a garden.
Progress! There are four planter's boxes set up around the back yard. Just this afternoon I went out and filled them with "salad ingredient" seeds (lettuce, kale, carrots, onions, spinach, etc.). I also have a plan for starting some of my seeds in the greenhouse, and a plan for how to lay out the garden (although the plan needs to be updated). It's still too early to do more than these tasks, but I'm on track for a successful growing season.


Goal 11:  Do some canning.
Too early to actually do this, but I've been preparing. I'm buying one set of jars each month, so I now have a dozen quart jars, a dozen pint jars, and a dozen half-pint jars. I have a few jars from my grandma, mom, and MIL. I have plastic lids for freezing jars. I have a list of supplies still to buy (water bath, Tattler lids... pressure canner?). I have a list of things I want to can. There's more planning and prep work to do; I'm loving it.


Goal 12: So some creative writing
I made some progress on this goal. I have a rough outline for a brand new novel. I have detailed outlines for three of the scenes. I have half of the opening scene written. There's nearly 9,000 words between all of those pieces, which is a great start. At the end of the month, I anticipate having more weekend time to write, so I will keep working. If I have two free hours and ideas in my head, I can bust out 2,000+ words in a sitting. After this term of Nate's classes, when I have free Saturday mornings to write, I think it would be reasonable to expect myself to put in 2,000 words each week. I want to do much, much more... but I'll start with that and see how it plays out.


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There's my update for January and February. Overall I feel like I am making progress and I feel confident that I will be successful in accomplishing my goals this year. Thanks to all of you for your support!

Dig up the yard, y'all!

Yard work, yard work, yay yay yay!

We are really making progress on our yard. I'm exited. When we are all done with it, there will be a lot less weeding and maintenance to do. It will look beautiful and we won't have to slave in the yard. Oh! It's going to be sooooo nice!

The former owners of my parent's new house really loved to garden. A little bit too much, as it happens. Whenever they planted something, they seemed to have decided that more is better, and they planted 10 of them. This is true of plants and bushes and trees. It's a good thing my mom is retired because she spends hours every week just trying to trim and maintain the yard.

The benefit to us has been some new gardening supplies and plants, especially a pair of beautiful maple trees! One of them has green and yellow leaves with gorgeous, coral-colored bark. The other has rich, green bark and bright red leaves. We drove up to see my parents on Saturday (3/2) and dug up the two trees. By we I unfortunately mean Nate, who did all of the laborious digging. I helped him bag the roots and we threw the trees in the truck. We went home, where Nate promptly tilled up a long swath of weeds and we put our new beauties in the ground. The area is now covered in a thick layer of hazelnut shells to keep down the weeds.

Earlier in the week I set up and filled some planter's boxes by the location for the new trees. The boxes will hold "salad fixings" like lettuce, spinach, kale, and carrots. There's a big box for onions farther back on the lawn. (The main garden area will have everything else, like squash and pumpkins and tomatoes and corn and beans and... you get the idea.)

The one disappointment this weekend? I drove all the way out (30 minutes) to the place where we get our bags of hazelnut shells, picked up 15 bags, only to discover when I got home that we were about 5 bags short of covering the whole weeded/prepared area. So next weekend or at least some time this month, I again have to make that hour-long trek to buy more shells. Or else I have to look at the incomplete dirt and fight back the weeds -- that's not appealing! Hopefully Nate's parents will be available to watch my daughter for a little while so I can make a trip. They live about halfway between our house and the hazelnut place, which is convenient.

Here'a a picture (I wish I had a good "before" picture of the yard but I don't, sorry!):

This shows our lovely new trees and the hard work we accomplished. You can see on the right side of the picture where the shells stop and we need to add a few more bags. We also want to add more shells in the back of the yard, over on the right by the water barrel. On the left, behind the greenhouse, is the main garden area. We have to till up that section of grass this year -- that will not be fun -- so we can expand the garden. And we need to add grass seed in the main yard to fill in a few places. But it's really coming along!!!

Let's Go Outside

First and most importantly, Kate Voegele rocks. If you're not familiar with her music, go check it out. "Don't Look Away" is a perfectly good album, but it's "A Fine Mess" that's really rocking my moods lately.

I'm a home body. If you know me well, you know this about me. I like my home. I like to be at home. I don't like not being at home. I really don't like to travel. (Part of the travel aversion most definitely stems from the fact that I can easily and violently become "motion sick" when I'm traveling, especially in a car.) But even though I'd always rather be home, I've found myself feeling a bit cramped lately. I think it's probably just the winter blues and too much time spent following the exact same routine every day, confounded by the many evening hours I've spent walking up and down a twelve foot stretch of my basement while staring at the ceiling as I replaced the electrical lines. Nothing encourages you to make a break for freedom quite like hours of a windowless hallway in a cold basement at night...

I say all this because we've been spending an inordinate amount of time outside the last couple of weeks. Yes, it is very cold and somewhat damp out there, and it still gets dark too early, and the ground is muddy. But the world is also beautiful. Most of it is still hibernating for the winter, but there are some signs of life. Little signs, and welcome. The daffodils will bloom soon, quickly followed by one of my favorites -- tulips. These are the first bright signs of spring after the long, dark winter. I watch for them in earnest every year. I have some planted in my yard, but not enough. I think I need to get more bulbs. (Some of you are chuckling at that comment, and you should; my obsession with bulbs is a bit out of control.)

Despite the unforgiving weather, it is a critical time of year to get certain things done in the yard. There are bushes, trees, and bulbs that cooperate better when handled during winter hibernation. The ground it also soft from the rain so it's easy to work the land.

In the front yard, we've been taking out some bushes. Those of you who saw the house when we first moved in might remember that the front yard was a bit of a jungle. Nothing but big, overgrown trees and bushes all around. We've cleared away almost all of the original plants from the front yard, save one little row of bushes. Well, most of those are gone now, too. We left just two of the bushes that were in the front yard when we bought the house. One bush is in its original locale, severely trimmed down. Another one has been transplanted across the yard and also trimmed. We added a couple of smaller, low-maintenance, pretty trees to replace what we took out, and there are a ton of bulbs (go ahead and laugh) in the flower/plant beds. There's still a bit of landscaping work to be fixed, but most of the front yard is now in shape, designed for a minimal amount of maintenance. Score.

The backyard continues to be a project. Sometimes I really need to step back and remind myself how far we've come with the backyard, because there is still a lot to do and it can be overwhelming. Since I can't finish painting the shed, it's too early to work the garden, and we don't have the funds to rebuild the retaining wall or replace the greenhouse, I'm working on another flower bed area, setting up a few planter's boxes to grow our lettuce, and daydreaming about the long-run goals for the backyard.

My daughter loves to run around and do all of these projects with us. It's adorable. She's delightful. Because it's so very cold out, we bundle her in two or three layers before going outside. Usually we don't go out until after naptime, and then only for 30-40 minutes. Her capacity for being outside right now maxes out at about 45 minutes, and even that is sometimes pushing it. I wish we had some outdoor toys for her because I think it would make things even more fun when we're doing yardwork.

I'm excited to start the garden. I want to plant so very many things in the yard. It's such a delight to walk outside and pick the lettuce or onions or tomatoes or zucchini that I need for a recipe. And watching things grow from tiny seeds to overflowing plants, weighed down with delicious vegetables... there's nothing quite like it. Such a joy. My fellow gardeners, green thumbs, urban farmers: What are you most looking forward to growing this year? Which plants do you miss the most?

Thanksgiving and the Chicken Coop

Thanksgiving was this week. That makes me feel obligated to talk about all the good food we made and how much we loved seeing our families, or maybe gripe about the insanity of early-morning Black Friday...

But the thing is, we got our chickens today! I'm on an emotional high from having sorta finished the coop, so I feel more like talking about chickens than about turkey.

I will try to reign in my enthusiasm long enough to talk about things that happened, gasp, two whole days ago! Thanksgiving! It's funny that I could be so excited about it for weeks but completely over it the next day. Life is so short and so fast sometimes...

Here's our beautifully set table for Turkey Day:

I was happy that I had an excuse to use the fine china and silverware, and the pretty glasses. Nate was kind enough to do some decorating last weekend (clearly I just wasn't going to make time for it) so we actually had some leaves, pumpkins, and my "Pioneer People" set up. I think I'm going to leave them up through this week, just so I can enjoy them a little longer. Besides, it feels too early to start doing Christmas things. There's still a whole week of November left! A whole week for pumpkins and pioneers!

I didn't have time to photograph the food spread before we dug in. It was standard fare (mashed potatoes, carrots and green beans, cinnamon-pineapple yams, rolls, stuffing, turkey, gravy; salad, ham, and apple pie from the PILs; pumpkin cheesecake). The baby loved eating carrots, green beans, and turkey. We've been chowing on leftovers the last couple of days.

After a full morning of cooking, we enjoyed our feast at about noon. Then the baby went down for a nap, the grownups had dessert, we cleaned up, and the PILs went home. Nate and I alternately worked on the chicken coop. When Baby Girl woke up, we hopped in the car and went to see my family for the latter part of their festivities. We got to spend a couple of hours with my side of the family, so it was a wonderfully well-rounded day!

The next day, a bit of early morning Black Friday. (Why do I do this to myself?) We tried the craft store, it was crazy busy and a bit disappointing, so we just got a couple of things and then went on to Freddy's. Sock sale! I think Fred Meyer's has to be the nicest place to go Black Fridaying; the other shoppers are relatively nice, the staff is friendly; there's free coffee and donuts; and the socks! They are all half price. It's really the only reason my mom goes out, I think. I also got a few extra things for Darling, since the prices were decent.

The rest of Friday was spent finishing up the chicken coop. Actually, that's been the focus of any and all free time during the last week. Evenings, afternoons -- any time we had a few minutes, it went to the coop.

Now I know I said we brought home chickens today, but I want to make it very clear that the shed is not completely done. As I mentioned in my October Recap post, I can't finish painting it until it the weather is sufficiently dry and warm (i.e. not until this spring), so there's a lot of painting yet to be done. We also need to add the rain gutter and hook it up to the rain barrel. Nate is less concerned about this task, but it's still high on my list! I didn't paint that rain barrel and schleck around in the mud to build it level foundation just for looks! Also, on the inside of the coop, we (Nate) would like to build a bit of shelving and storage space.

Finishing up the electrical work was a lot of fun. When you get to the home stretch and everything is coming together, it really is great. Very rewarding. When I got to turn on the breaker, flip the light switch, and go out to see the light shining brightly (and not electrocute myself, start a fire, or destroy anything in the process), I let out a whoop of joy. It gives me a bit of encouragement and motivation to work on the basement.

With that, here are some pictures...

The outside of the coop (needs more painting!)

The inside (you can see the light I wired and installed, upper right corner of this pic):

These are our chickens (Bitsy Crowing and Doreen LeWing):

The side/back of the coop, with a view of the chicken run:

Before-and-After Pictures of the back of the shed:

I'll share the before-and-after of the other side when it's actually all done... in the spring.

Painted Rain Barrels

If you had the time to read all of the ridiculously long, round-robin-of-updates post that I shared a month ago, you might recall that we are going to install a rainwater collection system (a series of water barrels) in our backyard. We picked up five 55-gallon barrels, three blue and two white. I was initially pretty excited about the white ones because they were a few dollars cheaper than the blue barrels. Then my mom told me that the white ones have to be painted before we can put water in them, otherwise we run the risk of having an algae bloom in the barrel. Arg.

Thankfully, my mom had three cans of spray paint that she was originally going to use on her own barrel; it's blue and therefore does not need to be painted, she just thought it might be fun to do some painting. Instead she generously gave us her cans of spray paint. She also bought a big can of spray glue. Mom got the painting process started for us by putting green paint on the bottom of both barrels and trying out some plant-stenciling techniques:

Finishing her paint job has been on my mind, but only at the very back of my mind. There are a half dozen other projects that need to get done right now! But for whatever reason, I was feeling the creative bug this weekend, and I decided to finish them up.

The barrel my mom started inspired me to do an "Under the Sea" theme. I used ferns from our yard for the plant stencils, and cut out sea creatures (fish, sea horses, and a turtle) using my Cricut. As mentioned, the lower half of the barrel was painted green. I then painted the top and top half white. In areas where I wanted to paint sea creatures, I sprayed a square of color (purple or orange). Using the spray glue from my mom, I sprayed the plants and paper cutouts. I let them sit for a couple of minutes so they were less tacky, then stuck them on the green and colored parts of the barrel.

In the end, here are some pictures and a quick video of the Under the Sea rain barrel (sorry for the fuzzy picts):

(The sailboat on top is my favorite part.) 

For the other barrel, I wanted to do a garden theme. I used flower stems from the dead gladiolus in the front yard. I again used my Cricut to cut out the flowers, bugs, and grass border. And I bought a couple more cans of spray paint so I could get a little more color in the garden. (This means I now have a bunch of barely used cans of spray paint; what do to with those???) I took a lot more time planning the second barrel -- I measured the barrel, drew a sketch of how the flowers, bugs, and colors would go, and carefully marked the barrel. It was tedious. The result isn't perfect, but it's a lot of fun! The dragonfly on top... I can't decide... the color ran, so it kinda looks like an ink blot, and it's cool but also weird. Maybe I should paint over it? You tell me.

Here's the Garden theme rain barrel:

Take a shower by candle light

Nate is downstairs right now, taking a shower by candle light. (I bet you thought the post title was in reference to me, huh? Nope.) As I think I've mentioned, one of our many current house projects is remodeling our downstairs hallway and basement. I've been (very slowly) redoing the wiring in the basement, which means the power is off on a couple of circuits. The whole lower west side, actually... which includes the bathroom. Nate wanted to take a shower, the upstairs shower is right next to the baby's room (and she's sleeping, of course), so he had to go downstairs. Since there's no light, he kindly asked if I would light a few candles. I made sure to pick the prettiest ones with the most calming scents, of course. Ha.

Today was a very busy day. It started with the usual Saturday morning routine (double-stop grocery shopping). Determined to make progress on the chicken coop, I then went out and spent a couple of hours trying to finish the priming. I did not succeed, but it's nearly primed. Of course, then I have to do the actual painting... I think I need another couple of hours to finish priming and probably 4-5 hours to paint. Hopefully during the week I will find time to prime, then perhaps next weekend I can begin painting. Nate has nearly finished constructing the outside run. So maybe we'll have chickens in 2-3 weeks? I hope!

Nate's parents stopped by to pick up some things. I gave away most of the empty moving boxes that I've been hoarding in the "furnace closet" in the garage -- Marie dropped them off with some friends who are moving. It was a little bit hard to see them go, but it's liberating to purge. I think I feel the need to hold on to them because of how many times we moved when we were first married; part of me is always just waiting for the day when we have to pack up and move again. But I let go of the boxes, so maybe I can just finally settle down. (Ha.)

The PILs also took away the oil tank for our old furnace. They are going to set it up at their house and use it to store diesel for their tractor. I am going to use the space in the garage to store the baby strollers. I was not sad to see the tank go because I am very happy that it is going to a new home where it will be used and loved. As we were loading it up, we gave it a name: The Pig. It has already stuck.

We continued to do yard work after lunch and during nap time. Mostly trimming and weeding, trying to get the yard in shape for the winter. It's easier to work with the plants and dirt in the slightly cooler, fall weather. I hope it holds out long enough for us to finish a few more things outside, then we can turn our attention inside for the winter... finish the basement projects and a handful of things upstairs. Next spring we'll be back out in the yard with some aggressive, ambitious gardening plans. Hopefully this time next year I will have grown enough of the right food that I can do some canning. I thought I might get to this year, but no, the garden didn't quite produce what I want, when I wanted it, in the quantities I'd hoped for. But we learned a lot and we're excited for the next growing season.


Last Sunday I made a coconut layer cake (which I originally saw on Pinterest). If you really knew me, you'd know that I am totally a "box cake" girl. I like box cakes, I think they are moist and delicious, and I often prefer them to home made cakes. Say what you will, it is what it is. So when I saw the recipe, it intimidated me a little bit. It seemed complicated. But it looked and sounded, oh, delicious! So I gave it a shot and I am quite pleased with the results. Honestly, the only "challenging" thing about it was gathering up the ingredients, and even that wasn't really hard.

Should you decide to try it out, here are my notes:
- Cream of Coconut is actually usually used for mixing alcoholic drinks, so you'll find it with other drink mixer stuff. (Oregon friends, you can find it at WinCo.)
- If you have 8" rounds, try them out. I used 9" as the recipe directs (it's all I own, anyway) and it was... well... I think I would have liked the look and size of a slightly taller and less wide cake. But it doesn't affect the flavor, just the appearance.
- The frosting is overly sweet, even if you drop the sugar down to 2 cups instead of 3. I ended up whipping some heavy cream and folding it into the frosting, which made for a lightly lighter and not sickeningly sweet frosting.
- The directions say to use one cup of frosting between the layers of cake. Use a generous "one cup" -- I was sparing with my one cup, and consequently my middle layer was too thin, and I ended up with 1/2 cup or more leftover frosting (and yes, I was very generous with the outside layer of frosting).
- Definitely toast the coconut. Beautiful and tastier.

Remodeling outside, cooking/baking, and that sweet little girl

At our house, the big project the last couple of weeks has been the chicken coup -slash- storage shed on the southeast corner of our property. For a long time it was a scary, dark, evil little shed, tucked away in the farthest corner of our property, that I refused to go visit. Now I'm banging around, rolling out chicken wire, arguing with Nate about how best to build a run for the chickens. It's nice to see it repaired and made useful.

One of my brothers is coming over for a few hours next week (I think) to do some work around the house. I plan to have him clean, prime and paint the coup/shed, and to finish the stairs on our front deck. The last few days have been focused on getting the two areas ready for those tasks. I needed to cut some more pieces for the deck and purchase several parts (bolts, screws, etc.). The shed needed significantly more work -- weatherproofing wrap, siding, trim, etc. Despite several long hours yesterday afternoon and most of today, we're still not quite where we need to be. Monday afternoon/evening will also be devoted to getting the last few things ready before my brother comes on Tuesday.

Here are some pictures of the evolution of the shed:

In totally unrelated news: I once again tried out some new recipes this week. For dinner there was pulled pork in the slow cooker on Thursday, which was nearly a disaster except some brilliant suggestions from Nate saved the day. Lasagna "roll ups" yesterday (Friday), which were not as quick and easy as I expected, but were quite tasty. Somewhere in there I tried homemade oreos.... They turned out as yummy little chocolate cookies, not at all like oreos. I'm disappointed but at least it wasn't a failure. I also made some healthy breakfast "cookies" that I really hoped Baby Girl would eat (she didn't) but that, surprisingly, Nate loved and even wanted a second batch. Finally, this morning I made cheese crackers (kinda like cheezit imitations) that also seemed like they were going to be a disaster because the dough wasn't coming together and they weren't getting crunchy when they baked, but with patience and a little extra oven time they turned out nicely. Baby Girl ate a few of them. I'm not totally sure what she thinks... jury's still out for her.

(In the morning I am going to make an apple crumb bread... very excited about this one! I've got fresh apples from my mom and hopefully about 30 minutes of free time.)

Speaking of the baby, she's doing great, glad you asked. She's sassy, mullety, and fat. She's standing quite a bit now -- even trying to do it on her own without help. Wednesday at the "baby sitter's" house she had a tough day, then Thursday she had a great day. Go figure. I enjoyed hauling her around in the Bee, though. It's good exercise and fun.

Ah nuts, I just noticed the time. I better add the pictures and get ready for bed. Hopefully I'll find time to talk about fruit and bike carriers soon!

Now that it's later, here's lots more!

You probably don't care to hear about MY GARDEN. But it's our first big garden, and it's doing great, and I like to give updates! If you don't care, just skip along to the section on books...

Our zucchini plants are huge, starting to get out of control. They get way too much water. Nate is big on watering them every morning. I keep trying to tell him no, they're fine, they can get a light watering most days and they will be perfectly content, but he thinks we won't get any veggies off the plants if they don't get water. Well, I picked 12 zucchinis yesterday and added them to the seven I picked on Friday. I think the plants are doing fine.

For the record, the 12 zuchs did not come from one plant. Some how I ended up with three plants. I promise you, I only deliberately planted one. The other two were supposed to be other types of squash, but I guess I got my seeds mixed up or something. The strangest thing is that none of the three zucchini plants look alike (each have different shaped leaves) and the zucchini they yield is unique (one yields dark and skinny zuchs, one light and plump, and the third in the middle of these two extremes).

Almost none of my squash-family plants (including the pumpkins) ended up as planned. There's a scallop squash that was supposed to be a zucchini squash (or maybe a crook-neck; I can't remember exactly -- but not a scallop). There was supposed to be an acorn squash. Two pumpkins ended up in the main garden, where they are going crazy and making a mess of things. They were supposed to be in a different part of the yard where they would have plenty of room to run wild, but again, I must have mixed up the seeds when I planted them because it's a mess. In fact, I had to cut back a lot of the pumpkin runners in the main garden area because they are taking over, attacking the onions and such. Sad.

Half the corn came up and is going strong, the other half is struggling. They are in two long rows, and the healthy half are in a lower-elevation part of the garden, so I think they get more moisture. Before it became garden, that area also had more compost-like material enriching the soil. I'm noting this for next year, so we can make sure the "upper" area gets extra compost.

Some of the onions are struggling. No surprise. Onions like cooler weather; ideally they should have been harvested by now. But I didn't get them in the ground early enough, so they aren't big enough yet to harvest. Hopefully they will weather the heat and I'll get a good yield in another month or so.

The tomatoes are happy and have been thriving in the heat. I had a lot of "volunteer" plants again this year. I made room for as many as I could, so there's about 10 of them around the backyard (not including the four that I deliberately planted). It will be too much fruit when it comes to bear, but I can probably give some away at church. Oh! And to my mom. She didn't get to garden this year. .:Sad face:. for her.

The bell peppers are still growing slowly. I'm just praying that they yield something before the end of the season. Next year I will get the seeds started earlier in the green house, for sure. I also need to do more research on how to make them happy, and put them in the sunniest spot in the garden.

Finally, the sunflowers: small but cute. They are out front in the side yard. We ended up with about 25 plants. They are all for chicken food and I have no idea how much we'll get from them or how long it will feed the chickens, but I'm hoping the fresh squash and pumpkins will feed them for a couple of months, and then the dried corn and sunflower seeds will make it through a few more months. Nate's parents say that chicken feed is expensive (of course, we're just going to get two chickens, which is a lot less expensive to feed than 20+ animals.)


Now on to my next topic, one of my other favorite things: BOOKS

A couple of weeks ago I read Memoirs of a Geisha. It's a moderately dense book and takes a little while to get through. We own the movie and I've watched it several times, so it was playing in the back of my mind as I read. I was impressed at how well the movie tracks the book. It picks up on a lot of subtle details from the story line, even though it didn't have the time to get in to everything.

Apparently that put me in an Asian mood because last week I read Pearl S. Buck's timeless classic, The Good Earth. Oh... such a good book. The story was very dense so it lasted me most of the week. When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. I was still  "digesting" it days after I finished reading. In fact, I'm still pondering motives and themes. It is the kind of story that literature teachers probably love to assign to students. I know I would have loved reading it for a class in college, and being able to participate in discussions and write a paper or two. I'm thinking about writing a paper on it just for fun. (It's that good.) It was a hard  read, though; it's not a standard "western" story where everything works out and the characters live happily ever after. Parts of it left me deeply troubled and saddened -- I have to remind myself that it's only a book, not a true story.

Now that I'm physically done and mentally almost done with The Good Earth I need a new book. It's August, so I can get a new "free" book on my Fire this month. I don't know what to read, though! Suggestions anyone? Grandma? I'd like to check out another Susan May Warren book but I haven't seen a free one that appeals to me. I might have to just buckle down and pay for Duchess.

My friend who is an author will be publishing a new novel by the end of the month, Queen Witch. I get to be a beta reader and I'm waiting for her to drop a copy of the manuscript in my hands. Any day now... I'm very excited! I'm hoping she might let me tease out a bit of the story line here on my blog. I might even interview her about the book, just for fun and promo. You should all be sure to download a copy when it's available and support my inspiring, aspiring friend! I'll let you know when and where you can get it.


Before I move on to the beloved topic of Baby Girl, I have a few OTHER updates...

Nate's best friend (and his lovely wife and their kids) moved into town one week ago. We've been out to see them twice -- the first of many visits! They are really easy people to spend time with, and I just adore the wife. She's a sweet woman and an amazing mom. She doesn't know it, but every time I'm with her I'm quietly watching her mothering skills and trying to pick up as many tips as possible. She inspires me; I want to be just like her.

I got a haircut this week and chopped it in half. I guess the new 'do is kinda cute.With the heat, I've just had it up, though. Whatever. It's just hair.

Nate and I are continuing to remodel in the basement, mostly in the hallway and utility room. Nate framed the door for the water heater, so there's a whole section of the wall under the stairs that's now ready for drywall! I asked him to buy a drywall knife-saw and I am ridiculously excited to use it. I've been doing a lot of wiring work in the basement. I was just going to add an outlet in the hallway, then I decided to replace (i.e. update) several sections of wiring, and I moved a light switch, and now I'm feeling so confident  in my skills that I'm going try and rewire a big section of the utility room. Doing wiring makes Nate uncomfortable but I've been reading a how-to book on basic wiring and electricity, and I don't have a problem doing the work. Plus, it's fun! A bit of puzzles and problem-solving. (Where does this why go? How do these things connect?) The downsides are that it's dirty, so I can't chase my kid around while I'm working, which means Nate has to watch her; and it takes awhile because you have to be very careful. Hopefully I can find enough time this week to finish the parts that I've started so we can get the power back on to the currently shut-down half of the basement.

I've had water on my mind a lot lately. Maybe it's the heat, or The Good Earth or Dune, or my obsession with Africa, or maybe just because I'm a hippie. (Probably all of those reasons and more.) Whatever the reason, thoughts on how to use less water and preserve/reclaim water have been swirling in my head for quite some time. Last week I ended up spending a whole evening doing research on rainwater collection and storage systems. Nate and I have been discussing this topic for quite some time; he wants to store water to prepare against a natural disaster or Armageddon, and I just want to save some money and create a more sustainable home (For once our extreme differences in opinion are a non-issue, yay!)

I chatted with my awesome mom about my research, my hopes for our system, and the possibilities. She went into research mode (gotta love it when that big brain gets set on a task -- there's no stopping her!) and found a place about 20 minutes east of here that sells slightly-used barrels for a bargain. So on Friday Nate and I took the baby out to the store and picked up five 55-gallon barrels for the price of two brand-new ones. (Nate and Kimmy, we should chat, I think you'll want to check this out.) We've lined them up at the back of the house and are planning to pipe them together, then hook up one of the rain gutters to divert the runoff into the barrels. I ordered a filter for the gutter. We also need to install an overflow valve.

Eventually we'd like to set up barrels at three or four different places around the outside of the house. It will be a tricky balancing act -- we need rain in the summer, when it doesn't rain much; they will be totally full in the winter, when we won't need rain. Hopefully we can set up enough of them to store rain in the spring that will last us through a month or two of summer. Someday I'd love to make a system that feeds some of the water back into our house, or at least into the sprinkler system. How cool would that be? We could do something like this:

At long last, here's a mix of general updates and things to do with BABY GIRL...

Nate goes back to work next week, and I go back to working part time. I will have to be in the office one more day each week, but since I will be on a reduced schedule it will only a couple more hours a week in the office. Still.... I'm not wholly thrilled about being in the office another day a week. I'm not as productive from the office, and I don't like the environment. Being at home brings me much closer to a decent work-life balance. While I'm researching away at my day job, Baby Girl will have a couple of days a week with grandma, and then a couple days a week with a friend from church. My mom very generously got a car seat for the sitter to use for Darling. It was an unexpected blessing, and frees up the money I was going to spend on a car seat for use on a bike seat!

That's right, the biking fever is intense in our house. Last week's 10 mile race got me in the mood for more. I have been back at it a little bit in recent weeks and looking forward to more time out, and taking my daughter for rides. I just ordered Darling a helmet; I'm looking at bike seats.

I'm particularly interested in this bike seat (from Amazon, available here): The WeeRide "Kangaroo" child bike seat. Instead of the traditional seat that goes behind the rider, this one is designed to sit right behind the handle bars, in front of the biker. That's appealing for several reasons, but also has its drawbacks. There's a Britax-brand seat that goes behind the rider which also appeals to me, but its a little more expensive.
I'm still in the research phase, so we'll just see where my analysis leads me. (Don't worry, I'm not going to drag you through every option and indecision with this purchase!)

My mom is helping us look for a bike trailer. She found a promising ad from someone who lives near her current house. Hopefully the trailer will be in good condition because the price is quite reasonable!

Now how about a few words exclusively on my beautiful daughter?

Baby Girl is becoming significantly more expressive. She's been clapping for awhile, and is just now mastering waving. She loves to wave at people driving by or people in the store, which tends to make people very happy -- it's really sweet. We're working on teaching her ASL signs. She has her own sign for "up" when she wants to be held (she makes a Y with her arms). She can do the asl sign for "more" food, but she's still learning that one. I'm not sure if she really understands what it means, but she will sign "more" when we're at the table feeding her. She can also do the sign for "milk" but I don't know if she's connected it to the white drink in her sippy cup. In general, Darling is very interested in signing and I wouldn't be surprised if she started picking up more things soon. I love it.

Her spoken vocabulary is still very limited (mama and dada, mostly) but she has "baby words" for things. Yesterday, for instance, when she was eating black beans for breakfast, she pointed to the dish of beans and said "bla-ba" and signed "more". So I think "bla-ba" is her version of black beans. She also has a word for water... kinda like "ar-rrr". And she definitely understands a lot of our words, but you can only tell by her face or body reactions. Still, I'm loving this phase where we can interact more and understand her needs!

In just the last week, Darling has started to stand up and "cruise" around. I've been telling people for ages that I want her to start standing and walking (I'm tired of holding her and fighting her when she wants to crawl in unclean or unsafe places), but now that she is getting on her feet, I'm a little sad. I realized that walking will be the end of crawling... it's just sad to see the end of a phase. But she really is a big girl and it's appropriate that she gets on her feet. To that end, here's a parting picture (obviously from bedtime) of my little stander:

Another four-word week, with 75% repetition

I am just going to write a brief post. It's already getting late, and I'd like to go bed early and try to catch a little bit of extra sleep. It's been a long week with several poor-sleep nights, and I'm tried and a tad grumpy. Plus Baby Girl's is 13-months today, which means I need to write her a letter. So... now that I think about it, I'll be lucky if I manage to get to bed on time, even.

Four topics: Report, Garden, Girl's Day, Books

My report was published! You can check it out at: www.qualityinfo.org/pubs/skills/fabmetals.pdf. I spoke with at least half a dozen reporters this week. The report was picked up in one of the evening news segments, and in a couple of newspapers. Neat. Meanwhile the uber boss is sharing the report with people all over the nation and I may have to give a few presentations. It's cool that my work is getting some traction, but I don't like to be personally in the spotlight.

The garden had a good week. The weather was hot (in the 80s all week) and many of the plants thrived. My zucchini is especially happy, and by happy I mean huge. I will definitely pick the first "fruits" in just a couple of days. Here's a picture from Monday, in which he seems only big, not huge, given how much he's grown this week:

And here are some other garden pictures:

Today I attended my family's annual "Girl's Day at the Farm" and took Baby Girl, too. Every summer my great Aunt Marge hosts the little get-together for the women on my maternal grandfather's side of the family. (My grandpa was Marge's brother.) Some of the family members come from 5 hours away, and they actually spend a night or two; it's more like "Girl's Weekend at the Farm" for them. Those of us who live closer just come down for the day. I only made it for about three hours, since I had to wait until Darling was up from her morning nap, and then she got pretty cranky and clearly needed an afternoon nap. BUT since my kid doesn't like to sleep in the car, the ride home actually consisted of her complaining for 15 minutes, screaming for 10 minutes, and then sleeping for 10 minutes. Blarg.

In any event, we had a very nice three hours on the farm, sitting under the apple trees and eating sandwiches, poking fun at each other, telling stories. It was great. Several second and third cousins who are my age were in attendance, and everyone was in good spirits. I just wish I had more time!!! Next year, hopefully, we'll make a WHOLE day of it.

I finished reading The Loom last week. I didn't like it. The story starts out well enough and at first you like the main character, but then she makes some poor choices and she gets annoying. The storyline disintegrates at that point; I lost interest and started doing skip-a-page reading. The ending, which I don't really remember specifically, was disappointing. (I remember how I felt about it, even if I can't exactly remember what happened.)

I then read a book called Heiress by Susan May Warren. Overall I definitely liked it, though it had a couple of moments when it got bogged down in explaining minutia. (It's cool that you did research on how a hand-operated printing press worked in 1900, but I don't need to know all the nuances, it doesn't help the story line!) There was a sub-theme about God (how He works, what it means to have His blessing, etc.) that appeared in the middle of the book, suddenly and for several pages, then disappeared for awhile, only to repeat itself two or three more times before the end of the novel. The author's note after the end of the story clarifies the purpose of the sub-theme, but in context, it actually detracts from the story. It's abrupt, not persuasive, and doesn't tie in well with the overarching themes. But again, I definitely liked the book. I'm planning to check out some more of SM Warren's titles -- she has one called Duchess that I suspect I will like. Ha.

I wanted something easy and familiar after the density of Heiress, so I read the second and third Hunger Games books (just finished book 3 an hour ago). The second one was better than I remembered. The third one was also slightly better, but that only means it was elevated from being really bad to just plain bad. I don't blame Suzanne Collins for the deficiencies of Book 3; I think it was the pressure of popularity that forced her to squeeze it out and perhaps meant her editors didn't do a sufficiently careful job. In any event, it's still disappointing. I did get a better perspective on the Gale-Katniss-Peeta love triangle of annoyance. The first time through, I was always rooting for Gale, and I disliked the constant uncertainty of the story line, and I hated that Katniss-Peeta is the resolution. On my second pass, I understand the relationships better and the conclusion makes more sense.

Finally, Nate is getting into a good reading habit, too. This week he read the first Harry Potter book. (Finished it about 10 minutes ago, proudly declaring he was Done! when he snapped it shut.) He wants to read through the whole series. Good for him! I'm thinking about following his head and re-reading them too, but I better let him get at least 4 books ahead of me first. So maybe in a month I will start reading them. :)

For now, I'm going to try and tackle a couple of he classics.